Indeed, the tirade against information in effect serves to justify the constriction of the area of rationality and scientific approach, in order to find room for all kinds of non-rational sources of "knowledge."

Holton, a Harvard physicist and science historian, introduces us to the two extremist factions he sees attacking science from both sides: the "new Dionysians" who would widen the spectrum of scientific knowledge to include nonrational experience and the "new Apollonians" who would restrict scientific investigation to dealing only with those questions that seem to guarantee rational solution from the outset.

Although some nonrational elements may be inconsistent with legal ideals, others—emotions and intuitions of certain types, imagination, judgment, rhetorical persuasiveness (considered below)—are fully consistent with those ideals.

In the nature of things there must be causes that explain why an industrial enterprise—mill, factory, foundry, dairy, refinery—is located at just this or that place, and not somewhere else. Some of these causes are non-rational, such as accident and caprice. . . . The remaining causes are rational and economic; that is, the selected locality is deemed to offer certain advantages in production or marketing.